What is Search Marketing? A Complete Guide

Search marketing is a type of digital marketing specifically focused on the promotion of a websites on search engines. Done right, and you can drive lots of valuable, relevant traffic to your site from searches made by your target audience, some of which without directly costing a penny.

Where Search Marketing Began

Back in the 1990s, the first ever search engine, Archie, was created. It wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1990s Google and Yahoo came about, two of the top search engines we all know and continue to use today. As you’d expect, they looked very different 20+ years ago!

Organic search marketing was in theory the first form of search marketing recorded, with people beginning to optimise their websites in the mid-1900s. At the time, this was in an effort to get seen on Yahoo and Lycos, who at first dominated the search market. It wasn’t until around 1997 that the name of “search engine optimisation” officially came into use.

The first PPC model was launched in 1996 by a company called Planet Oasis, a virtual city, featuring different companies as billboards on top of buildings. The model was soon adopted by GoTo.com, a search engine crossed with a directory, which allowed businesses to bid on certain keywords. It wasn’t until the end of the year 2000 that Google launched Google AdWords, now known as Google Ads, which is today’s most popular platform for paid search advertising.

Different Types of Search Marketing

There are two sides to search marketing: paid and organic. You can either pay to run search ads, enabling you to get seen quickly, or strategically optimise your website to try and increase your visibility organically overtime.

Paid Search Marketing

Paid search marketing, known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is a paid strategy to getting seen on search engines. With this, you have the power to control exactly what you show for and only pay when someone clicks on your one of your ads. It’s a great strategy if you’re wanting to go from being seen nowhere to everywhere fast.

The most common platform for search advertising is Google Ads, followed by Microsoft Ads, which is usually slightly cheaper to run. These let you set up and run search and shopping ads across Google and Bing's search results, as well as their partner networks like Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, AOL, and others.

Unfortunately, you can’t run search ads on the new and upcoming AI powered search engines, like ChatGPT, Clause, and Perplexity, at least not just yet. ChatGPT is expected to introduce ads to its platform for free accounts, possibly in 2026, which would present valuable advertising opportunities for businesses.

Organic Search Marketing

Organic search marketing is a long-term strategy for building lasting visibility in search results. The process is known as SEO, standing for search engine optimisation, which is all about strategically optimising a website to appearfor relevant searches. Most of the time, this isn’t a one-off measure, but rather sometimes that requires continuous improvement and maintenance.

If you’re wanting to spend less on ads, and have the time and patience to wait, organic search marketing is a wise investment. As users search in new ways, SEO continues to evolve, with many of its factors working to increase visbility across the wider web.

Do Paid and Organic Work Together?

Investing in a complete search marketing strategy consisting of SEO and PPC is an effective way to maximise your businesses visibility in search engines. Organic visibility usually takes to time to build, whereas paid visibility can be generated relatively quickly.

While running paid and organic search marketing together doesn't directly empower better performance as such, they do support each other. Combining both gives you more opportunities to improve visibility, drivetraffic and increase the chances of users returning to convert.

Difference Between Search Marketing and Search Engine Marketing

Both terms sound very similar, and to many, they may seem like the exact same thing, but that’s not the case. In recent years, search engine marketing has been more closely associated with paid search advertising.

Search marketing is a broader term that covers increasing visibility on search engines through both paid and organic strategies. This refers to anywhere users search, from Google, Bing, and Yahoo to a growing focus on LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.

How Much Does Search Marketing Cost?

Search marketing is done differently for every business, and with that, there no fixed cost. Different goals, different industries, different current performance, different providers; there are many factors that dictate the price.

As a rough baseline, a small business investing in a complete search marketing strategy should expect to pay at least £600 per month. Larger businesses should expect to spend £1,500+ per month, with many investing ten times that or more in highly competitive industries and markets.

For smaller budgets, it’s often best to focus efforts in one area at a time to get the most impact. Taking a paid approach is the most flexible and affordable for the short-term, as you can spend as much or as little as you want. In the long term, with no direct cost for clicks, organic search marketing can save your business money.

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Get Started with Search Marketing

Search marketing can be a powerful digital marketing strategy for getting your business seen, driving more traffic to your site, and capturing more conversions online. For some, it might not exactly come cheap, but the success you establish can be invaluable.

Ready to get started? Work with me, an experienced search marketing consultant, and together, we’ll get your business working towards and achieving its goals from search. Offering SEO and PPC services, whatever your needs, wherever you’re located, I’m here to help.

Take the next step towards search success – get in touch today.

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